It’s way more interesting.
In Architecture, Engineering, and Construction we’ve always had models. And we still do.
They’re mental models.
No digital model means anything to anyone without an adequate mental model in formation.
And that happens through exercise of equipment for visual close study, of those models. That is, exercising the cognitive functions described here which are not optional:
Don’t skip the achtung baby page above unless you choose to be completely disinterested in 5 primary cognitive functions that architects, engineers, and builders are engaged in, vis-à-vis models, for the vast majority of their time.
And it’s not just (achtung) attention, but also memory, and also the cognitive dynamic put in play that as far as we can discern or say, is thought itself1 , and also the equipment for setting that dynamic in motion.
Technical drawing in its centuries old form is the form of that equipment (for looking at models).
That form will evolve. The evolution already started. See here:
(you really should ^^^ see there)
1. …to the extent that we can attempt to describe what thinking is. At least we can say there is an observable dynamic in play when thinking happens.
A sort of side note:
OPEN VCS, a lens for looking at models 